Notjenny vs. Catzilla

Not Actually Jenny

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September 3rd, 2011

so I went down to the basement car park to feed the strays, and they were all like, oh hai, it's raining out there so we came in to sleep on the warm car bonnets, except for henry who seems to have claimed the cardboard box with the blanket in for full-time now

and I was like, so how are you guys, and what are you living on, air? since you definitely haven't been eating the delicious Whiskas With Cod (TM) that i've been leaving out for you the past few nights

and momma cat was like PETTINGS

and splodgey was all like PETTINGS and also CLIMBING ON THE BIKES

and henry was like, well I was actually quite comfortable in the box until you came along and disturbed me and no thank you i would not like pettings.

so i was like, well you seem to be getting on all right so I'm off to bed now

and splodgey was like RACE YOU TO THE DOOR

(and in unrelated news, the Judge Dredd drinking game where you drink every time anyone says "judge"? that's a lot of drinking.)

August 17th, 2011

So apparently Google's What Do You Love? service has a long list of rude trigger words, which if you type them in the box will redirect you to "kittens". (Good choice, Google. I guess if you typed in "pussy" then you get what you were asking for, though, hur hur hur.)

I like long lists of rude words, as some of you who assisted on a linguistics project of mine back in 2006 will recall!

Going through the list, a few things occur to me, though.

a) It'd be unfortunate if you happen to love - Vikings ("cnut")- being a patent attorney ("cipa")- chess ("pawn")

b) What the hell is a... never mind.

c) The theory that any word can be made more offensive by adding -face, -bag, or -head to it seems to hold true.

d) People really, really cannot spell.

e) "Feck" is on there, which seems a little oversensitive on Google's part, given that it's just likely to lead you to Irish blogs and many, many Father Ted fan sites, but whatever.

August 16th, 2011

We have not had a single burglar/car alarm-free night in the last week**.

Night before last there were three alarms going off at the same time, very near here, for about two hours, starting around 2 am. You could hear one or the other more clearly depending on the way the wind was blowing.

There is another one going off now (for more than 20 mins), also quite near here, and coming nice and clearly in to the room in which I'm trying to work.

Why the hell are these things legal - at all? You're seriously inconveniencing people within a half a mile around you in every direction, in the name of some very dubious "security" (I've already gone on about how if I was a burglar I would specialise in houses that have had alarms going off for more than 20 mins). And no, I don't care if your car gets stolen or your house got broken into because THESE THINGS ARE NOT MY PROBLEM and I would feel a lot more voluntary, neighbourly concern for you and your property if you would stop playing a loud noise in my ear at 2 AM, when you've clearly swanned off somewhere, assuming that someone will be concerned enough to call the police if the alarm goes off. This is not what will happen. What is far more likely is that your neighbours have gone "OH GOD NOT ANOTHER ALARM" and are putting in earplugs and cursing you. If you want better security, get a dog, or a monitored alarm with a human on the other end who will actually check your house, or move to a better area. I'm sure they LOVE unattended alarms going off up on Ailesbury Road. (Actually they probably bring private security forces to cart you away after four minutes. That I would love to see.)

Never mind the half-assed, unenforced 20 minute time limit, external alarms should be banned altogether. Sirens should be for the emergency services. How the hell do I go about making this happen? Current plan is to write a sternly-worded letter to Alarm Owner and wrap it around a nice brick. In the long run I think it may not have the results I want though.

*Somewhat faster than before, though. Because of the alarms. In case you didn't get that.**Okay, we spent one of those nights in Trim at my cousin's wedding, but I'm sure there were alarms going off at home while we were away.

July 4th, 2011

Dreamed that Regretsy had posted a link to a website for some convention that had an 8-foot tall robot as a feature. The robot had some kind of virtual reality link so that people not at the convention could take turns controlling it from the internet.

As I rampaged around the hall terrifying con-goers in my giant robot suit, I thought "The organisers really didn't think this one through".

June 28th, 2011

This is a very strange post from fake_lj_deaths, not least because it seems to come directly from a Facebook account rather than LJ. (OMG, I can't keep up with all this new functionality, you guise. My LJ is so 2007.)

Is this a possible form of new spam or account hacking, do you reckon, or is this guy just off his head on something?

June 22nd, 2011

So Lucky by Moldovan Eurovision hopefuls Zdob Si Zdub has been in my head for four days now. This may be a new record (I think my previous was about 48 hours with The Hukilau Song)*.

When I woke up this morning it was as though somebody flicked a switch in my head and started the song running again - I'm pretty sure I hadn't been listening to it overnight. Thank you very much for that, internal psychological construct!

May 18th, 2011

"The question we addressed was whether computer communication could function as a channel of support... In one study employing 1st-year psychology students at the University of Amsterdam as participants, we used a variant of this paradigm in which we asked about attitudes towards the exploitation of students for compulsory participation in experiments (the Amsterdam students as a group were against the high course credit requirements)...

During a computer communication phase, participants thoughts that they were anonymously exchanging their views on this topic with fellow students but received false feedback endorsing the student norm criticizing their exploitation (held constant). Crucially we manipulated the degree of support the fellow students would be prepared to give in a later phase of the study in which they were supposed to discuss this topic with the experimenter.

As predicted, participants were more likely to voice their criticism later in a questionnaire identifiable to the experimenter when they had previously received support during the computer communication phase."

- Spears, Russell et al. “When Are Net Effects Gross Products? The Power of Influence and the Influence of Power in Computer-Mediated Communication.” Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 91. Print.

March 28th, 2011

Had a mild cold last week, was mostly over it, then went to Lions (decided against the IBAs on the basis that it was much too late to get accommodation by the time they finally sent word we could buy tickets). Felt fine at the event, but since we got home early last Monday morning it's gotten steadily worse.

Trying to work in a desultory way all day, then gave up and went for a nap on the couch and woke up with the shakes. Not exactly unpleasant but a very weird feeling. Naturally I Googled it, but nothing much turned up. They went away when I had some sugar. Still weird.

*coughs pathetically* Send me virtual chicken soup, please... This is not conducive to getting stuff done. (Also, apologies to anyone I may have infected.)